1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to duobinary optical signal generation and more particularly to an optical transmitter and method using half rate data streams for generating full rate modulation in a duobinary optical signal.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, optical duobinary techniques have attracted attention for narrowing the spectrum of a transmitted optical signal and reducing the waveform distortion that is induced by optical fiber chromatic dispersion. The spectrum of the transmitted signal is reduced by a factor of about two by mapping a binary data signal to be transmitted into a three-level duobinary signal, with redundancy within the three levels, to represent the binary data. While there are several techniques for implementing duobinary mapping onto an optical carrier, all of the techniques result in the transmission of equivalent optical signals that take on one of three possible optical electric-field amplitude values, with certain normalization, of {−1, 0, 1}.
The transmitters for generating these optical signals have electronic circuits for generating signals for driving an optical modulator. One important limitation for these electronic circuits is data rate. In general, the higher the date rate, the more difficult it is to design the circuits and the more expensive they are to manufacture. A second limitation is linearity. In general, it is less difficult and less expensive, and higher data rates are possible, when the electronic circuits are not required to be linear.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,534 by Price and Uhel; and papers “Reduced Bandwidth Optical Digital Intensity Modulation with Improved Chromatic Dispersion Tolerance” published in Electronics Letters, vol. 31, no. 1, in 1995 by A. J. Price and N. Le Mercier, and “210 km Repeaterless 10 Gb/s Transmission Experiment through Nondispersion-Shifted Fiber Using Partial Response Scheme” published in the IEEE Photonics Technology Letters in 1995 by A. J. Price, L. Pierre, R. Uhel and V. Havard report the usage of a low-pass filter to generate the three-level duobinary signal and an optical duobinary technique where a redundancy is given to optical phase. However, because the input of the low-pass filter is the full-rate non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data, full-speed electronic circuits are required.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,952; and papers “Optical Duobinary Transmission System with no Receiver Sensitivity Degradation” published in Electronic Letters in 1995 by K. Yonenaga, S. Kuwano, S. Norimatsu and N. Shibata, and “Dispersion-Tolerant Optical Transmission System using Duobinary Transmitter and Binary Receiver” published in the Journal of Lightwave Technology in 1997 by K. Yonenaga and S. Kuwano report the usage of a delay-and-add circuit to generate the three-level duobinary signal and an optical duobinary technique where a redundancy is given to optical phase. Again, because the input of the delay-and-add circuit is the full-rate NRZ data, full-speed electronic circuits are required.
In both the U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,543,952 and 5,867,534, electronic modulator drivers may operate at a bandwidth less than one-half the system data rate. However, the modulation drivers are required to be linear in order to handle the three levels of the duobinary signal.
The U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,917,638 and 6,188,497 by Franck et al., and a paper by T. Franck, P. B. Hansen, T. N. Nielsen, and L. Eskildsen entitled “Duobinary Transmitter with Low Intersymbol Interference” published in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters in 1998 report a duobinary transmitter having dual binary modulation signals for driving a modulator. In a simplified view, an optical modulator is used as an adder for the delay-and-add circuit used in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,952. However, full-rate circuits are again required as both modulation signals have the same data rate as the optical signal.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,337,756; and papers “A Dual-Drive Ti:LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder Modulator Used as an Optoelectronic logic gate for 10-Gb/s Simultaneous Multiplexing and Modulation” published in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters in 1992 of P. B. Hansen and A. H. Gnauck, and “Prechirped Duobinary Modulation” published in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters in 1998 by A. Djupsjobacka report the usage of a dual-drive modulator as both a multiplexer and a modulator. Each of the dual modulator drive signals operates at one half of the optical data rate. However, no method is proposed or successfully demonstrated for preceding the data for providing the modulator drive signals or for recovering the original data from the duobinary optical signal by symbol-by-symbol detection.
There is need for a duobinary optical transmitter using electronic circuits at low data rates without a requirement to be linear where the original data is recoverable with an optical receiver by symbol-by-symbol detection.